Zero Jump Games - Wanted Level

In the base game a bounty is a number you pay at a kiosk. Pay it and the galaxy forgets you, no matter what you did.

Wanted Level adds what is missing: a reputation. It sits on top of the vanilla bounty system and tracks two things.

HEAT (0-100) is how hard they are looking for you right now. It jumps when you commit a crime and cools off with time.
NOTORIETY (0-1000) is your name in the bounty network. It does not go away because you paid a fine. It sets your WANTED TIER, and the tier decides who comes for you.

0 stars - Unknown: nobody. 1 star - Flagged: a lone hunter or a pair of Trackers. 2 stars - Marked: a professional squad, two waves. 3 stars - High-Value Target: veterans, a marksman, a combat robot, ships in orbit. 4 stars - Most Wanted: a Captain's squad, dropships, named hunters. 5 stars - Galactic Fugitive: up to 20 hunters and 10 robots at once, eight waves, three dropships, an Executioner or a named hunter leading.

THE WANTED HUD Five stars in the corner of the screen, blue at one and two stars, amber at three, red at four and five, with your tier and its name. When your tier goes up the new star slams in. It follows your HUD opacity, hides in menus and terminals, and shows while you fly your ship. Prefer it subtle? Switch to plain notifications, or turn it off.

MANHUNTS Hunters do not pop in next to you. A squad gathers out of sight and closes in, and at four stars and up a Trackers Alliance dropship flies in, lands, and the wave steps off it. Waves keep coming, the next one early if you wipe out the last, until the manhunt runs dry or you get away. Hunters come while you travel, while you commit crimes, and while you stand still thinking you are safe. They wait outside if you hide indoors, and a squad that loses sight of you walks to your position and picks the fight back up.

In space, from three stars, interceptors drop out of grav jump around your ship and engage, wing after wing.

Seven hunter types (Tracker, Pursuer, Enforcer, Marksman, Captain, Executioner, Combat Unit) scale with your level. At five stars they arrive in black.

NAMED HUNTERS WHO REMEMBER YOU Mara Voss, the sniper. Rook Kane, the Hound. Captain Elias Vane and his company. HK-77, the Collector. They lead the hunt at four and five stars, hit much harder than their squads, and carry legendary loot. Defeat one and they are gone for good. Run from one and they remember: they lead your next manhunt, tougher, and they tell you so.

FULLY VOICED 49 voiced lines (English) with on-screen captions: radio chatter as squads find you, call reinforcements, bring in dropships and start losing people; every named hunter's introduction, return, taunts and last words; the captain you negotiate with. Radio lines sound like radio, helmet lines like a helmet, and HK-77 like a machine. Voiced, text only, or off.

WAYS OUT

Parley. Holster your weapon near the squad for a few seconds. They hold fire and their captain makes an offer: pay them off (clears one star), surrender (jail, all heat gone), or pick the weapon back up. Once per manhunt. HK-77 does not negotiate.
Trackers Alliance kiosks. The self-service bounty clearance kiosks get a new entry, "Hunter contracts on your name". Buy off one star or all five. The more stars at once, and the hotter and more notorious you are, the steeper the price.
Pay or serve your bounty. Heat drops by 75 %. Notoriety only by 5 %. They remember.
Stay clean. Every crime-free week takes 10 notoriety off, thirty days another 50.
Wear something else. Hunters look for the spacesuit they saw you in. A different one cuts ground encounters by 40 % until they see you again.
Change or refit your ship. A new home ship sheds 40 % of your heat, a refit 15 % (once a day), and orbit gets quieter until the next interception.
Go off the grid. Sleep in your own outpost or home: heat bleeds off several times faster and encounters drop by 75 % for a while.
Fake your death. Collect three Hunter's Contract Slates from squad leaders and named hunters, pay the forger, and the network files you as collected: notoriety cut by 90 %, heat and grudges gone, no contracts for seven days. Commit a crime in that week and the cover is blown.

Fighting hunters is not a way out. Every fallen hunter makes the next contract bigger.

THE GALAXY REACTS (3 STARS AND UP)

Vendors charge a fugitive more and pay less: prices up 15 %, 30 %, 50 % and sales down 10 %, 20 %, 30 % at three, four and five stars.
Security scanners may flag your ID when you walk into a settlement, which heats things up and, at four stars and up, adds to the bounty you already have there.
At five stars, guards of a faction you have a bounty with attack on sight instead of asking you to come along.

BOUNTY NETWORK SCANNER A device under Aid (favorite it). It shows your wanted status, notoriety, heat, the contracts on your head, what the next tier takes and your recent record. "Lay low" shows whether your suit and ship are recognised and handles the fake death. "Settings" has everything: wanted display and HUD position, intensity (Standard, Relaxed with half the numbers, Relentless), encounters in settlements, space interceptions, dropships, comms, vendor markup, security scanners, attack on sight.

GOOD TO KNOW

Five stars is a war: up to 30 hostiles and three landed ships at once. If your machine struggles, set Intensity to Relaxed.
Hunters never appear inside interiors, ships, star stations, your outposts or homes, or during dialogue and scenes. With "Encounters in settlements" off they stay out of cities too.
The engine does not let a mod set an actor's level. Hunters use the game's own level scaling; a low-level fugitive with a high tier gets tougher hunters through health and damage instead.
The game cannot tell a mod what you are wearing, so the first spacesuit you put on after installing is taken as the one the hunters know.
The Wanted trait is optional. With it you start at 10 notoriety and encounters are 15 % more likely.
The voice lines were generated with AI text-to-speech and processed for the radio, helmet and robot sound.
Voice lines, captions and menu text are in English.

COMPATIBILITY

Requires only the base game. No DLC and no script extender. Developed and tested on PC.
Replaces one interface file, Interface\hudmessagesmenu.gfx (and its large-font twin), which is how the stars get on screen without a script extender. It conflicts with any other mod that replaces the HUD messages menu. If another mod wins, Wanted Level still works and the star updates show up as ordinary notifications.
Edits one base-game record, the desktop menu of the Trackers Alliance bounty clearance kiosk, to add its entry. A mod that edits the same menu will conflict. That one screen is shown in English in every language.
Everything else is new records. Vanilla bounties are read, never rewritten, with one exception: the security scanner adds to a bounty you already have.
Safe to add to an existing save.
Before removing the mod: finish or escape any manhunt, and if you are at five stars with a bounty, turn "Guards attack on sight" off in Settings first so that faction is friendly again in your save.

HOW TO USE

Load your game. A Bounty Network Scanner appears under Aid. Favorite it.
Commit a crime in front of a witness. Watch the stars.
When they come for you: fight, run more than 350 m, holster and talk, or visit a Trackers Alliance kiosk.

CHANGELOG 1.0.1

Hunters now actively pursue you. Every hunter carries a "hunt the player" AI package: a squad that loses sight of you walks to your position and picks the fight back up instead of wandering where it spawned.
Manhunts check on their hunters every 10 seconds instead of every 30.
A squad you paid off leaves within a minute.

1.0.0